The Eternal Triangle

by Liz Greene

The Centre for Psychological Astrology CPA offers all six issues of the journal "Apollon" for free. Visit www.cpalondon.com to download the PDF files.

Liz Greene has the knack of writing about
the most complex and murky areas of life with a sparkling astringent clarity,
and a compassionate appreciation that there are always two sides to a story. In
this article, she explores one of the knottiest human patterns, looking at
those relationships in which there are three sides.

Relationship triangles are an archetypal dimension of
human life. We do not ever escape them, in one form or another. We also tend to
handle them rather badly when they enter our lives. That is understandable,
because triangles are usually evocative of very painful emotions, regardless of
the point of the triangle on which we find ourselves. We may have to cope with
feelings of jealousy, humiliation, and betrayal. Or we may have to live with
the sense of being a betrayer - of being dishonest, of injuring someone. We may
feel all these feelings at once, as well as the conviction of being a failure.
The emotions that are involved in triangular relationships are often agonising,
and cut away at self-esteem. Because triangles confront us with very difficult
emotions, we will usually find ourselves trying to blame someone for the
presence of a triangle in our lives. Either we blame ourselves or we blame one
of the other two people. But triangles are indeed archetypal - and if we have
any question about their universality, we need only read the literature of the
last three thousand years. Anything archetypal presents us with a world of
purposeful patterns and intelligent inner development. There is something about
the experience of the triangle which can be one of our most powerful means of
transformation and growth, unpleasant and painful though it is. Betrayal,
whether one is the betrayer or the betrayed, does something to us which
potentially could be of enormous value.

Nothing enters our lives that is not in
some way connected with our individual journey. This does not imply blame or
causality, but it does imply a deeper meaning which may be transformative for
the individual who is prepared to seek that meaning. If a triangle enters one's
life, it is there for something. If we choose to react solely with bitterness
and rage, that is our choice. But we could also choose to make the triangle a
springboard for some real soul-searching. This is particularly difficult
because the experience of humiliation usually invokes all the defence systems
of infancy, and it is very hard to move beyond such primal responses to a more
detached perspective. As astrologers, we may find it worth exploring whether
there is such a thing as a pattern in the chart that is conducive to triangles;
whether there are deeper reasons why any individual gets involved in a
triangle, by their own or someone else's choice; and why some people are more
prone to triangles than others. We might also consider what possible approaches
might help us work with triangles more creatively, which will involve looking
at them psychologically and symbolically.

The universality of triangles

There are many kinds of triangles, not all
involving an adult sexual relationship. Even if we restrict ourselves to sexual
triangles, we would find many different varieties. Sexual triangles are not
always made of the grand dramatic stuff of Tristan and Isolde. In some adult
love triangles, all three points are fixed. There are two partners and there is
a third person involved with one of the partners, and there is no movement in
the triangle. It is static and may go on for many years, until one of the three
participants dies. In other love triangles, one of the points is constantly
changing. One can practise serial adultery - sometimes, as in the case of John
F. Kennedy, with an astonishing rate of turnover. But both these situations are
triangles, even though we tend to accord a higher romantic value to the first;
and both will evoke the same spectrum of archetypal emotions.

Apart from triangles where a sexual
involvement exists between any combination of the two sexes, there are many
other kinds of triangles. The most fundamental are those involving parents and
children. Triangles may also involve friendships. More complex are the
triangles which involve non-human companions. One partner may feel a sense of
jealousy and betrayal about the other one's dedication to work or artistic
involvement or spiritual development. Such triangles can evoke exactly the same
feelings of jealousy as the sexual variety. When one withdraws into a creative
space, one has somehow "left" the person one lives with, and it can
create enormous jealousy on the part of one's partner. The creative process is
an act of love, which is perhaps why the 5th house is traditionally said to
govern both. If one loves one's work, it may evoke enormous jealousy. There are
even triangles involved with pets. This might sound absurd, but one partner can
feel extremely jealous, hurt, upset, and abandoned because the other partner is
deeply attached to his or her cat or dog - even if one does not wish to admit
to such feelings in public. All these different kinds of triangles may seem
unrelated. The one thing they have in common is the component of one or another
variety of love, which, in a triangle, is no longer exclusive. And when we must
share someone's love, whether with another person or with something ineffable
like the imagination or the spirit, we may feel betrayed, demeaned, and bereft.

This little diagram is a simplistic picture
of the three points of the triangle. For the moment, the astrological
significators have been left out. Some people experience only one of these
points in a lifetime, and some are experienced in all three.

The Betrayer is the person who apparently
chooses to get involved in the triangle. I use the word "apparently"
because one cannot always be sure how much conscious choice there really is,
and one cannot be sure how much collusion exists between Betrayer and Betrayed
as well. But whatever might be at work beneath the surface, the Betrayer is a
divided soul. There is a love or attraction or need for two different things.
Most of us carry the assumption that love should be exclusive, even if on a
conscious level we profess a more liberal perspective. Because of the values of
our Judeo-Christian heritage, we are brought up to believe that if our love is
not exclusive, it is not love, and we are no longer "good" people. We
have failed, or we are selfish and unfeeling. When we experience this kind of
deep inner division, it is therefore extremely difficult to face. It is much
easier for the Betrayer to come up with a list of justifications for why he or
she is committing the act of betrayal. We do not often hear the Betrayer say,
"I am divided. I am torn in half." More commonly, what we hear is:
"My partner is treating me very badly. He/She is not giving me A, B, C,
and D, and I need these things in order to be happy. Therefore I have a
justification for looking elsewhere."

At the next point of the triangle is the
Betrayed, who is apparently the unwilling victim of the Betrayer's inability to
love exclusively. I have used the word "apparent" here too because,
once again, there may be some question about the unconscious collusion involved
in this particular role. All three points on the triangle are secretly
interchangeable. They are not as different as they first appear. But the
Betrayed generally believes that he or she is loyal, and it is the other person
who is disloyal. It is someone else who has initiated the triangle. Usually we
think of the Betrayed as having the hardest time in a triangle, because this is
the person who generally acts out all the pain and jealousy and feelings of
humiliation.

Finally, at the third point of the
triangle, there is the Instrument of Betrayal. This is the person who
apparently enters an already existing relationship between two people and
threatens to destroy or change it. This point of the triangle usually gets a
rather bad press, being seen as "predatory" or a taker of someone
else's beloved possession. If we happen to occupy this point, we may receive
only limited sympathy, and none at all from those in established relationships
who feel the cold wind of their own possible future. In fact, the Instrument of
Betrayal may feel himself or herself to be a victim, and may perceive the
Betrayed as the predator. We can begin to glimpse the secret identity between
these two points of the triangle. There are people who move round the triangle
and try all three points during the course of their lives, sometimes many
times. There are other people who stick with one point exclusively, and always
get betrayed in their relationships, or always wind up playing the Betrayer. Or
they are always the Instrument of Betrayal, and keep getting involved with
people who are attached elsewhere.

We might also think of triangles as
belonging to four basic groups. These may overlap, but they may also be
associated - up to a point - with distinctive astrological configurations.
There is the ubiquitous family triangle, about which this article is primarily
concerned. There are also power triangles and defensive triangles. These two
varieties of triangle are not really separate, although there are some slight
differences. Both have a distinctive flavour, and the reasons for their entry
into one's life may not be entirely rooted in the family background. A
defensive triangle would be, for example, a man or woman who needs to form an
additional relationship outside their established partnership because of
feelings of deep inadequacy. They may be plagued by great insecurity, and may
feel very frightened that if they commit themselves too much, and put all of
their eggs in a single basket, they would be too vulnerable, and rejection
would be utterly intolerable. A triangle is then unconsciously created as a
defence mechanism. If they are abandoned by one partner, they have always got
the other. This is not usually conscious, but it is a powerful motivating
factor in many triangles.

There are also triangles in pursuit of the
unobtainable. These can overlap with family triangles as well as with defensive
and power triangles. But there is a special ingredient to the pursuit of the
unobtainable, and often the deeper motivation is artistic or spiritual.
Sometimes, when we seek unobtainable love, it actually has little to do with
human beings. But we may translate our creative or mystical longings into the
pursuit of those we cannot have. In this way we open up a dimension of the psyche
which has more to do with creative fantasy than with relationship. The artist's
"muse" is rarely his or her wife or husband. This kind of triangle
can involve elements of early family dynamics, and it may also incorporate
defensive motives; but it needs to be understood from a different perspective.

The last group - triangles which reflect
unlived psychic life - subsumes all the others. When we look more deeply at
family triangles, we always need to ask why we want so badly to be close to a
particular parent. What does that parent mean to us? Why can we cope with
indifference from one parent but require nothing less than absolute fusion with
the other? In the end, inevitably, we will find bits of our own souls farmed
out along the points of the triangle - any triangle, whether motivated by
family dynamics, power, defensiveness, or all of the above. There are
exceptions, because there are always exceptions to any psychological pattern.
But in the main, when a triangle enters our lives, regardless of the point we
are on, there is some message in it about dimensions of ourselves which we have
not recognised or lived. If a pattern of triangles keeps repeating, then it is
a very strong message, and we need to listen to what it is trying to tell us.

The family triangle

Family triangles do not finish in
childhood, but have repercussions throughout life. If unresolved, they may
secretly enter our adult relationships. If a family triangle is unhealed, we
may recreate it, once or many times, hoping on some deep and inaccessible level
that we will find a way to heal or resolve it. Freud developed the idea of the
Oedipal triangle - also known as "the family romance" - in a very
specific context. In his view, we attach ourselves passionately to the parent
of the opposite sex, and enter into a situation of rivalry and competitiveness
with the parent of the same sex. Depending on how the Oedipal triangle is
resolved in childhood - and this includes the parents' responses as well as
one's own innate temperament - our later relationships will inevitably be
affected. If we unequivocally "win" and get the exclusive love of the
parent of the opposite sex, we suffer because we never learn to separate or
share. We experience a kind of false infantile potency because we feel that we
have beaten the rival. We are all-powerful, which may open the door to a later
inability to cope with any kind of relationship disappointment. And one's
relationships with one's own sex may also be disturbed accordingly.

If, for example, a boy sees his mother and father in
conflict, and "wins" the Oedipal battle by becoming his mother's
surrogate husband, he may experience deep unconscious guilt toward his father.
Also, he may lose respect for his father, whom he has apparently pushed out of
the way with great ease. The boy's image of father may then be of someone weak,
impotent, and easily beaten, and somewhere inside he will fear this in himself,
because he too is male. This boy may have to keep affirming his Oedipal victory
later in life by turning every male friend into a rival, and relating
exclusively to women. Such men do not connect with other men, but only to the
women who are attached to other men. The bond with his mother will have cost
this man his relationship with his father, which may mean he has no positive
internal masculine image on which to draw, and no sense of support from the
community of men around him. His sense of male confidence and male sexual
identity must rely entirely on whether his women love him - and the more, the
better. That is a very insecure and painful place in which to live. We could
apply the same interpretation in the case of a woman and her father.

If we entirely lose the Oedipal battle -
and the operative word is entirely - we also suffer. Absolute Oedipal defeat is
a humiliation which can severely undermine one's confidence in oneself. By
"absolute", I mean that the child feels that no emotional contact of
any kind has been achieved with the beloved parent, and a profound feeling of
failure ensues. One simply cannot get near the parent, who may be incapable of
offering any positive emotional response to his or her child. Or the other
parent is always in the way. Later in life, such an emotional defeat can
generate a gnawing sense of sexual inadequacy and inferiority. It can
contribute to many destructive relationship patterns - not least the kind of
triangle where one is hopelessly in love with a person who is permanently
attached elsewhere. One may become the unhappy Instrument of Betrayal, forever
knocking at the closed door of a lover's marriage. Or one may become the
Betrayed, helplessly repeating the Oedipal defeat in the role of the
established partner who is humiliated by the greater power of the mother- or
father-rival. With both unequivocal Oedipal victory and unequivocal Oedipal
defeat, we are unable to establish a psychological separation from the beloved
parent, and a part of us never really grows beyond childhood. We may then
become stuck in repetitive relationship dynamics where we keep trying to "right"
the original difficulty through a triangle.

Freud thought that the healthiest
resolution of the Oedipal conflict is a kind of mild defeat, where we get
enough love from the beloved parent but are still forced to acknowledge that
the parents' relationship is ultimately unbreachable. We may then learn to
respect relationships between other people, and build confidence through
establishing relationships beyond the magic parental circle. We are here in the
realm of what Winnicott called "good enough" - a good enough parental
marriage, a good enough relationship with both parents, and sufficient love and
kindness for the Oedipal defeat to be accompanied by a reasonable sense of
security within the family and a knowledge that one will continue to be loved. It
is also important that we do not fear punishment from the parent-rival. Sadly,
many parents, themselves emotionally starved and resentful in an unhappy
marriage, do punish their children for "stealing" the partner's love.
We need to recognise that we cannot supplant one parent in order to have the
other, but we also need to know that we will be loved by the parent we have
tried to overthrow. Naturally this is an ideal which few families can achieve.
A great many people suffer from one degree or another of excessive Oedipal
victory or excessive Oedipal defeat. What really matters is what we do with it,
and how much consciousness we have of it. And nothing is quite so potent an
activator of consciousness as a relationship triangle.

There is considerable value in Freud's psychological
model, and there do seem to be many situations where absolute Oedipal defeat or
absolute Oedipal victory are linked with a tendency to become involved in
triangles later in life. But there are serious limitations to this model of the
family romance. The parent to whom we attach ourselves is not necessarily the
parent of the opposite sex. The parent may be one's own sex. Oedipal feelings
are not, after all, "sexual" in an adult sense, but have more to do
with emotional fusion. So, in fact, do many of our apparently purely sexual
feelings in adulthood; sexuality carries many emotional levels which are not
always conscious. An Oedipal defeat or victory involving the parent of one's
own sex may have equally painful repercussions, and be equally conducive to
later relationship triangles. One may feel dislocated from one's own sexuality,
because the beloved parent is a model for that sexuality and the bond is too
weak or negative to allow the model to be internalised in a positive way. A man
may forever try to win his father's love by proving how manly he is. He may
then unconsciously set up triangles which are not really about the women with
whom he becomes involved, but are unconsciously aimed at impressing other men -
or punishing them for the father's rejection. And a woman may try to win her
mother's love and admiration in the same way, or punish other women for her
mother's failure to love her. The rival in an adult triangle may be secretly
far more important to the individual than the apparent object of desire. We
have only to listen to the obsessive preoccupation the Betrayed and the
Instrument of Betrayal have with each other to recognise that the situation may
be psychologically far more complex than it seems.

Helpful Oedipal hints - Venus as a
parental significator

The birth chart can tell us a lot about our
images of our parents, and the experiences we have encountered through them.
When we look at a chart, we may find some helpful Oedipal hints. The parental
significators usually show up very powerfully, and in such a way as to involve
one's emotional and sexual needs and one's image of oneself as a man or woman.
We might find planets in the 10th or the 4th house, which immediately suggests
the parent is a carrier for or representative of something mythic and
archetypal. Having no planets in the parental houses does not mean there are no
conflicts with the parents, or no subjective image which we project on them.
But it is often easier to perceive the parent as another person, another human,
however flawed. When planets occupy these houses, the planetary gods appear
with the parent's face, wearing the parent's clothes. A piece of our own
destiny, our own inner journey, comes to meet us in very early life, disguised
as mother or father and passed down through the family inheritance. While this
is not "bad" or "negative", it does imply something
powerful, fascinating, and compulsive about the parental relationship which
requires a greater degree of consciousness and a greater effort at integration.

Repeating triangles in adult life are
frequently linked with planets in the parental houses. Often we will see Venus
in the 10th or 4th. Venus describes what we perceive as beautiful and of value,
and therefore what we love, both in ourselves and in others. If a parent
appears in the birth chart as Venus, that parent is going to be a symbol of
what we recognise as most beautiful, most valuable, and most worthwhile. That
in itself is not negative. But it may mean that we project our own beauty and
worth on the parent, and a lot then depends on how the parent handles such a
projection. We see deeply lovable, worthwhile qualities or attributes in the
parent and we fall in love with the parent because we are in love with the
attributes. Hopefully, as we mature, we eventually introject these things, and
recognise that they belong to us as well as to the mother or father. This
process can help to create a lasting, loving bond between parent and child - a
mutual valuing of the other for qualities which are shared. But not every
parent is free of hidden agendas regarding his or her children. If the parent
is too hungry for love and admiration, he or she will unconsciously work to
maintain the projection and remain forever Venus in the child's eyes. Venus is
not known in myth for her emotional generosity. She is a vain goddess and is
repeatedly implicated in love triangles. If we leave the Venusian image
projected on the parent, we may never recognise it in ourselves. Then we will
keep looking for parental surrogates on whom we can place this image of all
that is worthwhile and desirable in life, and we will keep finding Venusian
love-objects who seem worth so much more than we do ourselves. Or we may try to
reclaim Venus by playing her ourselves, pitting one lover against another in
order to convince ourselves that we are really of value after all. Where Venus
is, we love.

Rivalry is one of the most characteristic attributes of
Venus placed in the house of the parent of one's own sex. We may wind up feeling
a lot like Snow White a good deal of the time. With Venus in the 10th in a
woman's chart, there may be deep and painful rivalry between mother and
daughter. From the daughter's point of view, the mother may appear to be very
jealous, although the jealousy may be expressed covertly as incessant criticism
or subtle undermining of the daughter's feminine confidence. Sadly, the jealous
or competitive mother is often an objective reality. But it is one's own Venus
in the 10th, and one must sooner or later acknowledge one's own jealousy as
well. If Venus is a same-sex parental significator, then Venusian attributes
are shared between parent and child. The archetypal love-goddess, who must be
the fairest and best-loved of all, is an image which has passed down through
the family line. This image needs to be individually expressed and not forever
relegated to a battle as to who will win the love-object. In this case the
love-object may not be as important as beating the rival. Rivalry and envy are
closely related, and when Venus is a same-sex parental significator, we may see
beautiful, enviable qualities in the parent and wish we had them ourselves.
Then we begin to compete in order to prove that we are Venus too - a bigger and
better and more beautiful Venus.

Parents may also feel a sense of sexual
threat when confronted by a child who is growing into sexual maturity before
their eyes. This sense of threat may be based on heightened sexual awareness.
When Venus is a parental significator, it may not be felt purely on the
parent's side, but may happen in both parent and child. Recognising that erotic
feelings may be shared between parent and child does not constitute an excuse
for child sexual abuse. Nor does it imply an "abnormal" relationship.
But children can be very seductive, in a childlike way. They are "trying
on" their sexuality. They neither want nor expect an adult sexual
response, but they need to discover their own physical and emotional identity
through expressing it to the parent. These things are simply part of family
life. They are not pathological; they are human, and intrinsically healthy. The
erotic energy that is part of any person's development process in childhood is
going to be unleashed in the family because that is the appropriate place for
the child to unleash it. It is also natural and appropriate for the parent to
respond positively - although it is not appropriate for this to be acted out in
destructive ways. Some children may carry more of an erotic energy pack than
others; this may depend on factors such as where Venus and Mars are placed in
the child's birth chart. Likewise, some parents may be more susceptible than
others, and the synastry between parent and child may help to illuminate why
this should be so. A reasonably stable parental relationship is important, and
also a sufficient degree of consciousness, for the parents to be able to
contain this natural process without falling into a triangle. If one is a
little girl with Venus in the 4th house, one may well try to split the parents,
because father is the beloved with whom one shares some very lovely and
pleasurable feelings. And if the parental marriage is insecure, and the mother
unconsciously begins to behave in a hostile or competitive way, is her
behaviour surprising?

Divided loyalties

Even in the happiest and most emotionally
stable of families, one may feel both deep love for and intense rivalry with
the parent. One may find, for example, Venus in the 4th and Moon in the 10th.
This is the case in the chart of Prince Charles, who has offered us one of the
more notorious triangles of modern times. With such configurations there may be
a strong identification with the rival. The child may wind up in a position of
being the Betrayer as well as the Instrument of Betrayal. That is not conducive
to feeling good about oneself, so something is likely to be suppressed. The young ego
simply cannot cope with such ambivalence. If one expresses Venus in the 4th,
with all its implications of love for the father, one will hurt and betray the
mother. And if the Moon is in the 10th, how can one do this to someone whose
feelings one is so identified with? Then Venus may get suppressed, and later in
life one may wind up in a triangle without understanding the early pattern
which is fuelling it. Or the feelings for the mother may be suppressed. One may
become a "marriage wrecker", as they used to call it in the days when
there were still marriages. A "marriage wrecker", psychologically
speaking, is a person who moves in on an established relationship, not only
because of genuine affection and desire for the love object, but also because
there is a compulsive need to take on the role of - to literally become - the
rival with whom one is secretly identified.

It is very difficult to acknowledge such a
pattern in oneself. If we wind up in the role of the Instrument of Betrayal, we
like to think that we have truly fallen in love with someone, and the fact that
they are already in an established relationship is just bad luck. They made a
mistake and married the wrong person, or they married against their will
because there was a child on the way. Whatever rationalisations we give
ourselves, we may justify our role as Instrument of Betrayal by devaluing the
importance of the already existing bond. This may sometimes prove extremely
naive, and lead to a great deal of disillusionment and hurt when one discovers
that the "unwanted" spouse means far more to the beloved than one has
ever been able to acknowledge. One may also discover, to one's horror, that one
begins to behave exactly like the despised rival whom one has initially
relegated to the "he/she only stays with her/him because of the
children" bin. When parental issues are unresolved, the urge to unseat a
couple may be extremely powerful - especially if the rival is also one's close
friend, which facilitates recreating the feelings of the original family
triangle.

We may also see things in the beloved
parent which are not so lovely. For example, a man with Venus in the 10th may
also have a Moon-Pluto square or a Moon-Saturn opposition, or Venus conjunct
Saturn or Chiron. There are two very different images of mother expressed by
such combinations, one of which is beloved and beautiful, the other of which is
threatening or hurtful. These two attributes tend to manifest in one's later
life as two people - the Betrayed and the Instrument of Betrayal. This is what
Jung called a "split anima", or the female equivalent - a "split
animus". Jung was quite preoccupied with the psychological dynamics of this
pattern because he suffered from it himself. Although his definitions are
somewhat rigid and in need of greater flexibility in interpretation, they are
useful in helping us to understand why we need triangles, and why the three
points are secretly interchangeable. All three people are likely to suffer from
the same unresolved parental dynamic. The inner split seems to be particularly
strong and conducive to compulsive triangles when apparently irreconcilable
opposites appear in the same beloved parent. There are parents in whom the
opposites are not terribly opposite, but there are also parents in whom they
are very extreme. Such parents are fascinating and often exercise great sexual
charisma because they are so unfathomable. The parent is beautiful and beloved,
but also hurtful, cruel, unfeeling, devouring, or otherwise indigestible. It is
very hard for the human psyche to accept extreme opposites in one package, so
one needs two people through whom one can experience the ambivalent feelings.
One will get to be Venus, and the other will get to be Pluto or Saturn or
Chiron or Mars or Uranus.

Parental images which convey extreme
opposites may contribute to a propensity for triangles in adult life. We get
involved with someone, and over time that person begins to take on the image of
one side of the parent. After a few years of living together, we begin to say
to ourselves and our friends, "My partner's so possessive, I just have to
have some breathing space," and there sits Venus in the 10th or the 4th,
square Pluto. Or we say, "My partner is so restrictive and conventional, I
just have to be free to be myself," and there sits Venus in the 10th with
Moon opposition Saturn. We feel we aren't enjoying the kind of beautiful,
erotic, amusing relationship that we hoped we would find in partnership. We
then justify the lover who plays the role of Venus. The split is acted out, but
in fact it reflects two opposite qualities that we have not come to terms with
in the relationship with one parent. Of course such splits connected with the
parents are, at the deepest level, concerned with opposite qualities that have
not been resolved within oneself. All triangles, including those arising from
the family background, are ultimately concerned with our own unlived psychic life.
If we were able to reconcile our own opposites, we could allow our parents to
be contradictory as well. There is nothing extraordinary about a parent having
both a charming, lovable Venusian side and a withdrawn Saturnian side or a
demanding Plutonian side. Human beings are multifaceted, and they may both love
us and hurt us. But we may find these contradictions in our parents intolerable
if the parents themselves cannot cope with their own contradictions. Then we
get no help in learning to integrate our contradictions. And some of these, in
astrological terms, are simply too extreme to deal with in early life. By this
I mean configurations which link Venus or the Moon to Saturn or Chiron - these
require a wisdom only time and experience can make available - or to the outer
planets, which are quite impossible for a young child to integrate on a
personal level.

Split families - oppositions from 4th to
10th

Triangles may develop within the family
through the parents splitting up. Often this is portrayed in the birth chart by
oppositions from the 4th to the 10th. Such oppositions do not inevitably
indicate that the parents have separated, but usually there is conflict and
separation on a psychological level, if not a physical one. One experiences the
parents in opposition, and when this happens we are usually forced to take
sides. Our own inability to cope with the situation impels us to do so, and
sometimes one parent cannot refrain from trying to elicit the child's loyalty
as a weapon against the other parent. In this situation the bottom line, as
ever, involves a contradiction within the individual, experienced first through
the parents, reflected by opposing planets in the chart, and ultimately needing
to be dealt with on an inner level. But unconsciousness on the part of the
parents can make this a longer and harder process. Even if we are subjected to
no parental pressure, it is unlikely that we can cope with divided loyalties at
such a young age. And in such circumstances it would take extremely wise and
conscious parents to be in sufficient accord with each other to place no
emotional pressure of any kind on their child. Usually, if the parents are so
unhappy that they are separating, they are not in the mood to be cooperative.
Separations release primal emotions in us, and these may involve considerable
vindictiveness - especially if the separation is triggered by a triangle.

Often the child winds up feeling like a
football in a particularly aggressive football match. One parent - especially
if he or she is the Betrayed - may attempt to claim possession of the child,
overtly or subtly, in order to hurt the Betrayer. There are certain scripts
which appear to be read by lots of people. For example: "Your father left
me because he was a bastard. He was incapable of loving. He didn't love any of
us, otherwise he wouldn't have gone off with that woman." The message to a
male child might be: "I hope you don't grow up to be like him." The
message to a female child might be: "I hope you don't grow up to marry somebody
like him." Such messages do not have to be spoken. They may be
communicated through martyrdom and ongoing misery. The Betrayed, when parents
split up, will usually have great power over the child's psyche because of the
compassion he or she can draw out of the child. Children are not equipped to
step out of the fray and look objectively at the break-up. It must be someone's
fault, either their own or one of the parents. And children also dare not
reject those messages, because they are terrified of angering the parent who is
now the sole caretaker. In our society, when parents split up, the mother
usually gets the child - even if this is not psychologically the best solution
for that particular child. There are many instances where the father might be
emotionally better equipped to raise the child, but the courts of law do not
see it that way. The mother must be quite floridly appalling to have her child
taken away from her. If the parents are not actually married, the father's
rights may be nonexistent in terms of access. One might well question whether a
father really merits having his child torn away and turned against him solely
because he has betrayed his wife. But triangles have a way of generating very
unpleasant emotional consequences which carry on down the generations and breed
more triangles.

The permutations of human blindness are many and
various, and divorcing or separating parents - or even those who remain living
together but are emotionally alienated - will generally demand that the child
choose one or the other. The love for the other parent must be denied,
suppressed, silenced. This is terribly human. If we are hurt by someone, we
find it hard to bear if someone else we love shows affection to the person who
has hurt us. If there are oppositions between the 4th and the 10th in the
child's chart, then the child's own inner division colludes with the parents'
division. I have seen many, many examples over the years where the person has
had to deny great love for a parent in such circumstances. The denial may be
believed even by the person himself or herself. When we see Venus, Moon,
Neptune, Sun, or Jupiter in a parental house, we know that there is a powerful
positive bond with the parent, even if the relationship has also been very difficult.
If any of these planets are in the 4th, they are likely to describe strongly
positive and even idealised feelings for the father. But if there has been a
break-up and the father has gone off - or if there are oppositions from planets
in the 10th, even if he hasn't gone off - it may prove impossible for the
person to keep such feelings in consciousness. The ambivalence may be too
painful, and the sense of disloyalty to the mother may be too great to bear.
Perhaps the father has left because of another relationship. Perhaps he marries
again, and has other children. Then the problem is compounded, because the
child's own jealousy allies with the jealousy of the mother and makes it quite
impossible for the emotional bond with the father to be recognised. The
relationship is destroyed, and the child, who is now grown up, says, "Oh,
I haven't seen my father much since the divorce. I have very little to do with
him. I see him occasionally, but we don't have much of a relationship."
All the positive, loving feelings have been pushed underground, because we do
not cope well with divided loyalties. We suppress them because we have to
survive psychologically; and we have to live with mother.

If there are planets in the 4th which
suggest love and idealisation, and the parents split up, the suppressed
feelings for the father may provide fodder for later triangles. This can apply
to both sexes. It should not be surprising if a woman coming from this kind of
family background, with this kind of chart configuration, winds up playing the
Instrument of Betrayal and hurls herself at a married man. Equally, she may
find herself as the Betrayed, married to someone just like her father. Or she
may become the Betrayer as a defence, because she is determined not to wind up
like her mother. A man with this background and chart placement may wind up
unconsciously choosing a woman like his mother and then, to his horror, finds
himself in his father's shoes. A triangle may be inevitable, because the more
unconscious the feelings are toward this beloved missing parent, the more
certain they will be to emerge later in an adult relationship.

These unconscious feelings may also cross
sexes. They do not necessarily limit themselves to women who seek the missing
father in other men, or men who find themselves in the same situation as their
fathers. A man who has lost his father, and who has Venus or Neptune or the
Moon in the 4th, may seek the qualities of the father in women. Or if he is
gay, he may seek them in another man. We need to think of these dynamics not
from a perspective of rigid sexual demarcations, but as a way of attempting to
heal a wound. Also, they reflect our efforts to contact archetypal qualities in
our adult relationships which we glimpsed first in the parent and which we
ultimately need to find in ourselves. Because we carry something unresolved and
unhealed, we may faithfully recreate our parents' marriage. Then we may find
ourselves in the same triangle, on any of the three points, with either or both
sexes. These underlying dynamics seem very obvious when we start thinking about
them. The difficulty lies in thinking about them when we are in the middle of a
triangle. It is very easy if we are the detached astrologer or psychotherapist
- if there is indeed such a thing as an entirely detached person - or even the
friend with a certain amount of psychological knowledge. We may clearly see the
familial roots of many adult triangles if we are observers, but it is extremely
difficult to see them when we are involved in the triangle. And the more
unconscious we are of our parental dynamics, the more emotionally compulsive
the triangle is likely to be, and the harder it is to see clearly.

Even if we do see, we may still be bound,
because we have to live something through. We do not heal anything through the
exercise of reason alone. But the emotions which the triangle brings to the
surface may change, and the outcome may be very different, internally if not
externally. The sad thing about triangles is that everybody loses. Sooner or
later, on one level or another, all three people wind up hurt. Even if the
Instrument of Betrayal succeeds in breaking up an existing relationship and
"getting" the love-object that he or she has been fighting for, it is
a Pyrrhic victory. The Betrayer has to choose in the end, so even if something
is won, something is also lost. And the victory is no less Pyrrhic for the
Betrayed who succeeds in "getting back" the erring partner. We have
exercised our Oedipal power and reversed the original Oedipal defeat that we
suffered in childhood. But what have we really won, and what must we live with
afterward? Resentment seems to be inevitable, no matter which point of the
triangle we favour. If we are the Instrument of Betrayal, we have led someone
else into making a very painful choice, and often there will be a lot of
suffering, not only emotionally but also financially, and so there will be
resentment. But even more importantly, if we remain unconscious, we have done
nothing to heal the inner split which lies behind the triangle. We have only
achieved an external solution. Nothing has really changed.

Insecurities which generate triangles -
Saturn and Chiron

There is another consequence of family
triangles - the potential alienation between oneself and others of one's own
sex. An unresolved Oedipal battle may result in a loss of trust in one's own
sexuality. If a situation of intense rivalry and competitiveness occurred with
the same-sex parent, there will inevitably be effects in terms of our friendships
and the way that we interact with our own sex later. If a woman has a mother
who is an insurmountable rival, at whose hands she has suffered a painful and
humiliating childhood defeat, confidence in her femininity may be undermined.
And because she does not trust herself, she will not trust other women. They
will all seem to have the power to "take away" those she loves. This
mistrust of one's own sex can be very acute. A woman may have a wonderful
friendship with another woman, and then she meets a really lovely man, and they
get involved, and what does she do about introducing her friend to her partner?
The undercurrent of anxiety and suspicion may make things very difficult, and
unconsciously she may even set herself up for betrayal. She may unconsciously
select as friends those of her own sex who act out her unresolved conflict with
her mother, because they have unresolved conflicts with their mothers. The same
applies to men. If a man has experienced a situation of destructive
competitiveness with his father, then, in any later relationship in which he
becomes involved, the issue of rivalry will always raise its head, because
other men always seem to be potential rivals. One must be on guard all the
time. This is not possessiveness in the ordinary sense. Its roots are quite
different.

Placements such as Venus aspecting Saturn
or Chiron can contribute to this dynamic, not because they are in themselves
Oedipal, but because they reflect certain insecurities which can be compounded
by the family triangle. Mars aspecting Saturn and Chiron may also reflect deep
sexual insecurities which are heightened by family triangles and lead to
feelings of defeat. These sets of aspects may compel a repetition of the
failure later, or an attempt to heal the hurt by proving one's sexual potency
through triangles. There is no single astrological pattern which describes a
propensity for triangles, but rather, many different combinations which can
describe different images of and responses to the parents, and different ways of
reacting to the natural and inevitable Oedipal phase of childhood. Venus-Saturn
and Venus-Chiron do not "cause" a person to be drawn into triangles,
but they describe a deep and innate awareness of human limits which, in
childhood, when there is no real comprehension of what this could offer in a
positive sense, can lead the child into feeling inadequate and damaged. The
loss or alienation of a beloved parent will then be attributed to one's own
failings, and later in life one may feel one cannot "keep" a partner
because a rival will always take him or her away.

Oedipal experiences often come out with a
bang in midlife, because the planets making their cycles at that time - Saturn,
Neptune, and Uranus - may trigger configurations which connect us to childhood
issues. There is a great deal of unlived life clamouring for expression under
the midlife group of transits, and unresolved family triangles that have
managed to remain buried may finally break out because they are carrying
unlived psychic life with them. But it depends on how powerful the conflict is.
It may come out much earlier. There are people who experience triangles from
the very beginning of their relationship lives. Not all triangles have parental
roots, and parental roots may also involve something deeper. We may well wonder
what could be deeper than the Oedipal dynamic, but as Jung was reputed to have
once said, even the penis is a phallic symbol. If there is a family pattern
which is unresolved, such as the Venusian issues we have been looking at, it
stands a good chance of erupting in one's outer life under the appropriate
transits. That, for some people, may be the only way any kind of healing or
resolution becomes possible. But behind the parental issue is the archetypal
issue - why do we seek the love of that particular parent, and what does the
parent symbolise for our own souls? This is invariably linked with what needs
to be developed in oneself - one's own destiny.

At midlife, if important bits of oneself
have remained undeveloped, they will come bursting out, especially under the
Uranus opposition to its own place. And often, the first place we meet these
occluded bits of ourselves is in somebody else. It is the most characteristic
way in which the psyche knocks on the door and demands integration. This need
to become more of what one really is may begin with a sudden attraction.
Unlived bits of ourselves may also appear in a rival. Surprisingly, the rival
may be more important psychologically than the person over whom one is fighting.
But if there has been no pattern of triangles earlier, the eruption of one at
midlife may not necessarily imply an unresolved family problem. And if it does,
the problem needs to be seen in a larger context.

Triangles which involve unlived life

We now come to the issue of what might really lie
beneath the dynamics of triangles - beneath the parental patterns and defences
and power-plays and all the other apparently "causal" reasons why
triangles enter our lives. I believe there is always an element of unlived life
in every triangle, and for various reasons it seems we are sometimes unable to
discover that unlived life except through the extreme emotional stress which
triangles generate. Betrayal is an archetypal experience which is our chief
instrument of maturation. This does not mean that we all need to become
embittered cynics. But there is something important in recognising how our
fantasies of what we think life and love should be prevent us from growing up
and becoming full members of the human family. Betrayal is the means through
which these fantasies are punctured and recognised. We attempt to enclose
ourselves and other people in our fantasy-world, which is meant to compensate
for childhood pain. Since all childhoods have pain, the naive assumptions we
carry are also archetypal, and reflect an alternative child-world that
resembles Eden in its innocence and fusion-state with the divine parent. The
serpent in the Garden is therefore an image of this archetypal role of
betrayal, which is inherent in the state of innocence and sooner or later rises
up to destroy our fusion.

There is no formula to cope with the pain
of betrayal. But an archetypal perspective can help us to look at things
differently, although the pain cannot be explained or imagined away. There is no remedy for this kind of pain.
But there is a difference between blind pain and pain that is accompanied by
understanding. The latter has a transformative effect. When there is no
consciousness, triangles do tend to repeat themselves - different characters,
same script. Some triangles are truly transformative. They do break apart an
old pattern, and the new relationship is genuinely much happier and more
rewarding. Or the triangle serves the purpose of freeing energy, freeing inner
potentials, and even if the old relationship is re-established, or one winds up
with neither party, everything has changed. But we are still ourselves, however
much we try to rearrange our outer lives, and if an inner issue has not been
dealt with, the same patterns will begin to arise in the new relationship. The
compatibility may be greater with another partner, but one must still deal with
one's own psyche.

A triangle can be like a grand trine in a
chart. The energy circles around and around; it flows back on itself and does
not nourish anything else in one's life. Within triangles, all three people
tend to project elements of themselves on each other. The triangle holds these
projections in place, and there may be enormous resistance to change. We might
even say that the triangle forms because there is resistance to change, so
whatever is seeking expression from within is experienced through projection.
When such a triangle breaks up, the projections come back home again. Psychic
energy is released, whether it is through death or the voluntary relinquishing
of someone. The timing of this is not accidental. In one or two or even all
three parties, unconscious issues have finally reached a point where they can
be integrated, even if this is expressed by simply letting it go. The moment we
are able to do that, the projections begin to become conscious. I do not
believe real forgiving comes in any other way. It is a kind of grace. It cannot
be created by an act of will. It is very sad to hear the Betrayed saying, "I
forgive you," not because it is truly heartfelt, but in order to get the
straying partner back again. Underneath there may be no forgiveness at all -
although this may not be entirely conscious - and then the punishment can go on
and on. Forgiveness can only come out of a recognition of one's collusion in
the triangle - whatever one's role - and the taking back of one's projections.
Before that, forgiveness is not really possible. It only seems to emerge out of
something being genuinely integrated in oneself. The entire process is
transformative. We cannot manufacture forgiveness if we have been betrayed -
nor can we manufacture it for ourselves if we are the Betrayer. We can only
work to integrate what belongs to our own souls.

The Saturnian parent who rejects, and then
turns up in a triangle as a cold and rejecting partner, may have something to
do with our own need to acquire boundaries. If we view this fundamental
Saturnian experience from a more detached perspective, what is rejection, in
the end, except someone else drawing boundaries which we find intolerable? It
may be our own lack of boundaries that attracts us into a triangle where we are
the Betrayed, rejected by a Saturnian partner who says, "I can't stand
this emotional claustrophobia. I want to be separate." Or we may be the
Betrayer, fleeing from a partner whose emotional needs seem stifling but who
secretly mirrors our own inability to cope with loneliness. The hard and
painful lessons that come from these kinds of experiences are lessons about what
is undeveloped in ourselves. We may have to discover our primal passions if
Pluto is in our 10th or 4th. But we may disown this at first, and say, "My
mother was terribly manipulative," or, "My father was so
controlling." Why do people become manipulative and controlling? If
someone is expressing Plutonian qualities in a relationship, they are not doing
it because it is fun; they are doing it because the relationship is
equated with survival, and there is a desperate need to ensure that the beloved
remains close. Pluto is mobilised when one feels under threat. People become
manipulative because they are terrified of losing the object of their love.
That love object constitutes survival for them, and manipulation seems the only
possible way to ensure the continuity of the relationship. We are all capable
of this, given the right level of attachment and the right level of threat. If
we disown these Plutonian attributes and keep them firmly projected on the
parent, Pluto may turn up in a triangle. Then we ourselves may have to discover
how possessive we can be. Or we acquire a deeply possessive partner. We may get
as far as saying, "Ah, yes, I have chosen someone just like my
mother/father." That is a useful piece of insight, but it is only the beginning.
This possessive quality in the parent is described by our own 4th or 10th house
Pluto. We must still discover it in ourselves. Often we only discover we have a
Pluto through the experience of betrayal. It is just a blank in the chart until
a triangle unearths it, and then we suddenly find our Pluto for the first time.
We discover that we feel passionately, that we need intensely, that desperation
can make us treacherous and manipulative, and that control may seem the only
way to survive. This process of self-discovery may be a frightening and
humbling experience, but it allows us to fully become what we are.

Psychic integration is the teleology of all
triangles. Even when the outer planets are involved in parental triangles, the
thing to which we are so deeply attached in the parent is really something that
belongs to our own souls. This "something" may involve our stretching
beyond personal boundaries and allowing a deeper or higher level of reality
into our lives, but nevertheless it is connected with our own life journey.
When we see astrological symbols which we experience first through the parents
and then later through a triangle in which the same experience repeats itself,
there is something within us that needs to be lived, and it may keep coming back
through triangles until we find a way to live it. Planets which are parental
significators in the chart are not only descriptive of parental patterns. They
are descriptive of unlived dimensions of ourselves, especially when they do not
agree with the rest of the chart. Even if the parent embodies the planet in
creative ways, it is still our planet, and belongs to our own destiny. A planet
in the 4th or 10th, or in major aspect to the Sun or Moon, may not be enacted
obviously by the parent, but it will be part of what we experience through the
parent. If the parent has not creatively lived the archetypal pattern
symbolised by the planet, it is harder to understand what we are dealing with.
And therefore we may not realise what we are meeting through a triangle which
appears in our life later. It is not just an unfinished parental complex,
although that element may be important to explore. It is ultimately one's own
planet, and therefore something of one's own soul. It is part of our
psychological inheritance, but we must give shape to it. Even triangles which
appear screamingly Oedipal also have to do with our own inner lives, because
what we love or hate in the parent is something that belongs to us. But we need
to find our own way of living it.